Monday, April 21, 2008

Dave recently found a site that will hopefully help us get rid of all those credit card applications (we get at least a half dozen of these a week). According to their website, OptOutPrescreen.com allows you to:

Opt-out from receiving Firm Offers for Five Years

Opt-out from receiving Firm Offers permanently

Opt-In and be eligible to receive Firm Offers (for those who have previously opted-out)

This keeps you from getting offers from any of the four credit reporting agencies. Sweet! Needless to say, we both signed up to be permanently removed.

Catalog Choice - we also signed up for Catalog Choice. Basically each time you receive a catalog that you don't want, you log into their site, look the catalog up and then request that you be taken off the list. Catalog Choice does all the work for you as well as keeps you updated as to the status of your request. Great site!

2 comments:

These definitely work. We started doing this about three years ago and our junk mail is a fraction of what it was. You just have to be careful about companies you do buy from because they are allowed to send you stuff post buying. Either make a note when ordering that you do not want catalogs to be sent after you order, or just call anyone who sends you stuff. The same goes for charities you give to. We did have to call a few companies/charities directly, but not many. It also really reduces the paper waste to switch bills to on-line or automatic pay. Enjoy the empty mailbox!

We normally go through our mail each day, grumbling at we separate the general recycling with the pages that have to be shredded first. Last week, we decided to save the entire week before recycling or shredding and just see how much a week's worth of paper was. It wasn't an overwhelming amount of mail, but out of about 2 dozen items, we only needed 2 of them! Two!

And it adds up so fast. Every 4 months or so, we take a trip to the recycling center on-campus with our paper recycling and by that time, I'll have filled a large lawn trash bag (30 gallon size). Thirty gallons of paper tossed because it was unwanted? Yikes! I'm definitely looking forward to that empty mailbox.